Credit Tips: Direct Merchants Credit Card Review

Posted On: April 1, 2006

Author: scarymary
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 12:57 pm
Post subject: Did I make a mistake with this account?

OPINIONS PLEASE!!!!!

I just recently got my credit back up to a respectable level. My hubby and I had a really tough time rebuilding our credit after I was sick and lost my job.

Now that we’re back on track, we’re finally getting approved for better CC offers w/o annual fees, lower rates, etc.

I applied to Direct Merchant’s Bank on 9/15/05 and until yesterday (9/26) hadn’t heard a thing. Well, lo and behold, my cards came yesterday (MC @ CL $4500 @ 13.24%. Sounds OK but WAIT!!!

A few days ago, while waiting to hear from them, I wanted to check out their website so I typed “Direct Merchant’s Bank” into Comcasts search engine. Well, one site came up for the main DMB site and then about 42 pages of websites showing consumer complaints such as consumeraffairs.com and complaints.com to name a couple.

Such horror stories of this company lowering CL’s so people had to pay over the limit fees, one woman ready to claim bankruptcy from one CC from DMB with only $2000 as a balance. Other people saying that DMB changed their APR to 29.99% for no reason… and it killed their credit, etc. It scared me to death!!!!!! So when the cards came, I discussed it with my hubby and we decided I would just not activate them and close the account on the grounds I didn’t accept their Terms of Agreement so I did that last night on the phone.

Any stories you can share? Did I do the right thing?

Most importantly, will closing this account kill my credit AGAIN???

Author: Polonius
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 3:25 pm
Post subject:

One of my accounts was sold to Direct Merchants’ Bank a few years ago. The terms DMB sent me said that there was no grace period on purchases–they’d be charging me some outrageous interest amount from date of purchase, instead of the usual grace period of 20-30 days after the statement closing date.

I cancelled the card at once.

Author: scarymary
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 3:43 pm
Post subject: BUT…

Hi Polonius…

I’ve been reading you’re posts and you are a walking plethera (sp?) of information! LOL

In your opinion, what will this do to my credit? I know I’ll take a hit on the inquiry but what about closing the account???

Author: Polonius
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 4:10 pm
Post subject: Direct Merchants Credit Card Review

There’s no hit on your credit for closing the account. All this episode does, basically, is add an inquiry to your credit report, which might reduce your score by at most 7 points. Don’t worry about it–and don’t hesitate to apply for a different card.